Skandia Life speeds up document creation

Pensions provider Skandia Life is bringing in a document production system to make its document output more flexible ahead of UK pensions A-Day on 6 April, when a simplified pensions regime comes into force.

The firm said the decision to replace its existing proprietary document generation system with software from Thunderhead was driven in part by the changing duties and requirements around pensions come A-Day, including the production of annual review statements for pension holders.

The move was also driven by the step-change in functionality and enterprise integration that the Thunderhead software promises.

Tim Mann, IT director of Skandia Life, said the Thunderhead software could incorporate graphics and context-sensitive text into output documents, which offered the prospect of improved marketing communications.

He also said its ability to generate e-mail and PDF documents could be used in time to bring cost savings compared with traditional mailouts.

With A-Day looming, Mann said Skandia Life's existing system required far more manual intervention to produce some of the new regime's standard annual documentation for customers than the Thunderhead replacement system would.

He also said the new system would cut the number of document templates being used by marketing and allow staff to develop their own templates without support from IT staff.

The Thunderhead software, which has XML interfaces, is currently being integrated into Skandia Life's predominantly IBM iSeries server environment.

Higher-level functions, such as e-mail and PDF generation, will be rolled out next year.

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